Archives

All posts for the month November, 2009

This is the summary of the thread “Tips on What Not To Do” from the VtES Usenet Newsgroup in 2004. The thread (or at least part of it when it took a detour on discussing the playability of “Form of Corruption“) revolved around what player’s shouldn’t do in the first few turns in order to avoid scaring the whole table and/or drawing unwanted attention to one’s deck.

Play Parthenon and Anarch Revolt. Unless your deck is an Anarch Revolt deck (so people will get pissed eventually), doing this during your first turn means you’ll spend the rest of the game telling people you aren’t playing an Anarch Revolt deck. [Halcyan 2]

Discard either Baltimore Purge or Protect Thine Own. Doing so makes people cringe. They might assume you’re playing a Baltimore Purge deck or might do pre-emptive rushes to make sure you can’t Protect Thine Own them. If you’re really handjammed I guess you can discard one of these, but it’s still not recommended early on. [Halcyan 2]

Influence out Arika or Leandro first. Lots of decks do it (and I often do it for strategic reasons) but Arika/Leandro comes out with a giant target on the forehead, so don’t be surprised if the reaction is very hostile. [Halcyan 2]

Play/discard Smiling Jack. Not as serious but some people might assume you’re playing a wall deck and act accordingly. [Halcyan 2]

Play multiple Slaughterhouses early game. Even though it’s totally counter-productive, I’ve seen people do everything in their power to foil someone that plays a milling deck. Something about it not being “fun”… Not like you need to play multiple Slaughterhouses anyways until the end of the game where they are useful to push ahead a Brinksmanship oust. [Aramis]

Play Le Dihn Tho casually. Like Arika, influencing this vampire up is painting a big bulls eye on your forehead. This is mainly because it means you’re playing Giovanni S&B and you deserve the hate anyways, but still it’s one of those abilities that screams “come kill me now“. [Aramis]

As in the previous years the German National VtES Championship tournament takes place in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany on weekend December 5th to 6th, 2009. The two day event consists of two tournaments, the German Draft Championship (played on December 5th, 2009) and the German (Constructed) Championship (played on December 6th, 2009)

The Tournaments

A draft event will take place on Saturday. Winner will be awarded with the German Draft Champion title of 2009.

Sunday will be devoted to the German Championship — please note that you will not have to qualify for this event. The Top 5 players will automatically be qualified for participation in any Continental Championship in 2010.

The Location

The event will take place on the 5th and 6th of December in DasHaus in Ludwigshafen am Rhein. Amongst European players this location is well-known due to the numerous events such as Qualifiers and Nationals which took place there in the past. It offers more than enough room for about 100 players in two different rooms. Drinks will be available on location.

5 EUR admission fee for both days + cost of cards for the draft (about 20 EUR)

Prizes

tba

Notes

Traditionally, numerous Christmas fairs take place in neighboring cities like Mannheim or Heidelberg during December. These not only feature traditional German treats, but also souvenirs and the famous “Glühwein” (mulled wine).

In the VtES Usenet Newsgroup you can now find the complete standings and finalists decklists of the VtES European Championship 2009, that took place in Palma de Mallorca, Spain on November 13th-15th, 2009.

.. you cannot use Telepathic Counter to reduce the damage inflicted by Spying Mission. This because since the bleed is already (being) resolved, thus preventing (reaction) cards being played. For the same reason you cannot play Archon Investigation against a vampire when the bleed is boosted to 4 or more with the help of Spying Mission.

The Gothsicles have recorded a VtES song named “Everyone Should Play V:TES (‘Cause Somebody’s Gotta Be Worse Than Me) – feat. Ben Peal“. The song is about how darkNES, one of the band members, sucks thrives at playing VtES. In addition, Ben Peal, three time NAC winner, has some guest vocals on it. Way to go, Gothsicles!!

It’s our designated weeknight
Or weekend if you roll that way
I brought a couple a’ beers
But save like six for me, okay?
‘Cause like an adult swim
I’m always out of the pool
I got an academic hunting ground
‘Cause I’m always getting schooled

I’ve got a history
Of playing inadmissibly
To any tournament I see
‘Cause I get killed by Chimerstry
You’re thinking moves ahead
I’m struggling with card text
And trying to determine
The effects of Rötschreck

It’s got great group dynamics
And that keeps me coming back
Even though all I’m good at
Is the pre-game talking smack
I’ll threaten you
With my brand new
Inner Circle Toreador
Then watch you pound me into the ground
With cards from ’94

I’ve got a history
Of playing inadmissibly
To any tournament I see
‘Cause I get killed by progeny
You’re thinking moves ahead
I’m struggling with card text
And trying to determine
Rötschreck’s effects

I’ve got a history
Of playing inadmissibly
At every tournament I see
‘Cause I get killed by Thaumaturgy
You’re thinking moves ahead
I’m struggling with card text
And wondering what horrid combo
You’ll throw at me next

There are several things that currently tick me off with regards to VtES, not the game itself, but the proper support by White Wolf/CCPin general:

Lack of Information by White Wolf

Missing Comprehensive Information on Rulings

Erroneous Rating Website

Lack of Information by White Wolf

The lack of information on VtES on the White Wolf website is appalling. The official VtES website is updated very infrequently, and information on a number of topics is scarce. There is little to no information about new expansions, whether it is the actual release date or contents of the expansion. And I doubt that there will be a preview page before the release date of “Heirs to the Blood“. Information on major VtES events on continental championships is also fragmentary at best. Sometimes there are announcements of these tournaments, sometimes there’s no information, and the same applies to the results of these major tournaments.

On the other hand, I don’t mind the delay of “Heirs to the Blood“. Problems with a card manufacturer can happen (and by Murphy’s Law will happen at the worst possible moment), and I like a delay more than a lack of quality, as happened with the 3rd Edition expansion. Only White Wolf then needs to inform both the customers and resellers earlier about these kind of delays.

Missing Comprehensive Information on Rulings

The next thing that is really annoying me is the lack of comprehensive on rulings (whether card related or not). Currently LSJ (as current VtES designer and Net*Rep) answers all of the relevant questions in the Usenet Newsgroup “rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad” which are then archived in Google Groups. From time to time (yearly at best) a selected number of rulings is then compiled into the official rulings webpage, which only contains a rather small selection of all rulings. So in the end Google Groups/Search is the current means to find relevant rulings.

But depending on the actual Google search behavior (I call it “Google’s search mood“) you may find the actual information or not. What makes matters worse is that you may not find the latest ruling. And if you switch the sort order in Google search from “By Relevance” to “By Date” the number of search results may change. So I am always wondering when using the Google search, did I find all relevant rulings, did I find the latest ones? Not a really state of mind.

There is a reason the french players have compiled a huge list of rulings on all VtES cards. Unfortunately they have translated the rulings to french, so it’s not commonly usable for the VtES community.

So what’s an alternative? Magic the Gathering has a card database called “The Gatherer” (formerly “The Oracle“) which not only contains the relevant information for a given card, but also the rulings for this card. I don’t need the fancy graphics or an attached discussion thread, but the combination of card information and rulings is more than desirable. The only problem with this is, that for VtES you would need to start such a card database with rulings from scratch for 1300+ crypt and 2000+ library cards. That’s would be a huge amount of work, most likely not doable by White Wolf itself, and even a fan-based project would really have a tough job pulling this off.

Erroneous Rating Website

The last major annoyance is the rating system website. Since the change to the new website a couple of years ago, the website and the underlying software/database is in shambles. So deeply flawed that the country and city rankings had to be disabled this year. And the list of additional complaints is long:

Large tournaments cannot be entered properly

Entering new players is cumbersome.

Entering tournaments can easily end in mishaps.

Players attributed to wrong countries.

..

As Johannes proposed today in the VtES Usenet Newsgroup, a joint fan-effort for creating a new database and piece of software would really help here. Entering (by the Princes) and managing the ratings (by Robyn) is already 99% based on fan efforts, so taking over the rating system/database itself is not huge step itself anymore.